From Villain to Hero: Masculinity and Political Aesthetics in the Films of Bangladeshi Action Star Joshim

Abstract

In this article, I trace the growth of the action film genre in Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when new technologies such as video cassette recorder (VCR) were emerging in the market and national politics was wrestling with the competing notions of masculinity, leadership and heroism. I look at the emergence of the Bangladeshi action star Joshim within the context of South Asian trans-regional cinema and its changing tropes of masculinity. I argue that anxiety over new technologies, changes within Bangladesh’s political regime and its leadership, including state censorship, and shifts in the representation of heroic masculinity within national imagery—from a socialist model associated with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to the modern, energetic and globally inflected masculinity of Ziaur Rahman—were intertwined. These changes, I contend, are reflected in the transition in Joshim’s roles from the primarily villainous characters of his early films to an action hero from the 1980s onwards. The article examines Joshim’s role in the film Muhammad Ali (Motaleb Hossain, 1986b), as an example of a glocalised action film. Its sources include articles and letters printed in Purbani and Chitrali, the most widely read Bangladeshi film magazines of the 1970s and 1980s.